Posts Tagged ‘elimination diet side effects’

So the elimination diet seems, in short, not to be sitting well with me. Or needs some modification for my particular system, at the least. For the first few days, I thought maybe I was just having some normal adjustment issues. Most sources tend to say to expect a little hardship (fatigue, minor headaches, etc.) during the first week. And to be fair, I am not yet past that first week.

But holy heck, is my body unhappy with me.

So beyond the fatigue and the slight queasiness and the car on my chest and the angry lemur hugging my head (which I have accepted as probably a natural or expected part of the week one experience, and well worth it when things start to actually improve), there is this gaggle of other things that are definitely getting progressively worse rather than better and seem like they may or may not be likely to improve.

Like that my digestion and stomach issues have been WAY worse than they’ve ever been before. I’m back to inflating like I’m seven months pregnant after lunch and dinner, and only a bit less the rest of the day. And falling-down-tired for hours and hours after eating. Plus I have a pile of acid in my throat after every meal with any kind of meat in it (which is new). Not pleasant.

And I am suddenly and dramatically being overcome by the same stuff I was struggling with when I was medicated for my depression and the results were going horribly awry. On day two, I met with a friend and had to stop myself from crying in the middle of the Starbucks. …For almost no reason. The next day I wasn’t able to restrain the tears anymore, and freaked out on Dr. Douchecanoe when he made a comment about what I will do if my health situation turns out to be “normal”. Which I would have been angry about regardless, but in my usual state these days I would have been able to make my indignant arguments without bursting into tears, or raising my voice. By yesterday, I was breaking down into tears several times every half hour or so. Every half hour. Over nothing. Not good.

Plus, my thinking is seriously foggy. And not “foggy” like a driving annoyance, but “foggy” like when you can’t see the taillights of the car two feet in front of you anymore. Trying to reason through even basic things is hazy, and frustrating, and just as crazy difficult as it’s ever been. And more so now because I know a week ago I wouldn’t even have noticed that these things required thinking about. The effort would have been so trivially negligible. It took me more than two hours to write out a quick and almost entirely pre-determined shopping list to e-mail my husband yesterday. More than two hours. And significantly enough more that I don’t want to type it here because it is that embarrassing. And not because I got sidetracked or distracted, but because I could not keep track of what I was doing at any given moment. “Okay…I need a vegetable…One of these two vegetables…Maybe sweet potato…Could that work with quinoa?…Okay, picture quinoa…Having trouble picturing quinoa…Why am I picturing quinoa again?…To see if it goes with something…With what?…” It’s kind of a sad process. I feel like someone should just give me a box of crayons and maybe a flower or two and put me out of my misery.

So anyway, in total I’m not sure whether something about what I’m doing is putting more strain on my digestive system rather than healing it. And I’m not sure whether something is bringing on the same type of crazy ass depression symptoms that some of the SSRI’s did. I’ve been careful to get enough calories (the same as I was eating before), and protein, and to keep my blood sugar as stable as possible. But clearly, something is OFF.

And yes, maybe any sane person would just put the elimination diet on hold for now and test for food intolerances some other time or some other way. But I never claimed to be sane. I want to be able to find out if foods are responsible for some of this. Or if they’re not, I want to be able to take that off the table. So for now, some temporary changes to try to pinpoint and resolve what’s going on, and fingers crossed that the situation improves.

In the mean time, until my brain figures out how to think again and I stop seeing the world through crap-coloured glasses, I can tantalize you with half written posts about search terms, and soon-to-be classics with titles like “Vision. …And Crotch Movies”.

Unnecessarily Long Sidebar About What This Site Is All About Which I Should Probably Just Put In The “About” Page Instead and Kind of Makes That Whole Other Page Redundant:

I feel like I should write something vague here so that I don't have to change it in the future when it becomes horribly outdated.

Like, "I have arms. ...And legs. And this blog is a record of them."

Except it isn't. Mostly. Sometimes.

So instead I will say that this started as a chronicle of my journey with depression, went through some pretty awful experiences with antidepressants that brought me very near to suicidal for months, and came out the other side with the diagnosis that I've actually been struggling with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, often called Chronic Fatigue Syndome, and probably didn't need any of that in the first place. I'm just one of the lucky ones who gets profoundly more depressed on antidepressants. Oh, and while I wasn't accurately diagnosed, all that stuff I was doing to push myself actually sped up the progression of the illness like crazy. Yay (I'm really not as bitter as I seem).

Good news, my mood is really quite stable now most of the time.

Bad news, I can no longer wash my own hair, or prepare my own meals, or drive a car, or, you know, stand up for more than a minute. I've now been bed bound since the spring of 2011. But I can get to the bathroom now, and hold my own head up, and occasionally write here, and you have no idea what a victory that's been.

This has generally ended up being a place to keep my sanity, embrace absurdity, stay connected while I can't leave the house, and remind me to look at the amusing side of what's going on around me.

Except when the amusing side is the bum part. Because, really, who wants to look at that?